Uphill

Likely depicts a steep residential street climbing a Pacific Northwest hillside, a recurring subject in Dennis's practice given his Portland origins and the topography of Seattle and Tacoma where he often worked. The woodcut medium suits the subject: parallel cuts articulate the steep grade, while flat blocks of tone read as house facades stacked up the slope. Dennis worked with an economical cutting vocabulary, relying on silhouette and contour rather than detailed shading. The 1990 date places the print in the period when Dennis had returned fully to the region and was building a body of work focused on the visual character of small industrial towns. The composition's emphasis on a tilted street relates to a broader American tradition of urban-incline imagery seen in the Ashcan School, while the flat, planar treatment shows familiarity with Japanese [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) (famous-place pictures), where roads and slopes order pictorial space.